This invention relates to an information processing system. More particularly the invention is directed to an information storage and processing system that is effectively configured to ensure compatibility of removable stored media among different systems.
Apparatus of this type includes optical disk filing systems and word processors which store information in different proprietary formats. These different formats are inconvenient and have hindered the spread of such systems, because removable stored media from one system are not compatible with other systems. Accordingly, information stored on one system has not been usable on another system.
More particularly the invention concerns 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch optical disks which conform to ISO SC23. The storage capacity of a 3.5-inch optical disk is about 100 megabytes (MB), and that of a 5.25-inch optical disk is about 600 MB. The storage capacity of such discs is much greater than the capacity of equivalent physical size other storage media such as magnetic disks.
Recently there have been studies for using such media to store personal medical history data. In a radiological application, a single conventional x-ray with a resolution of 2,048 by 2,048 pixels by 10 bits requires 5 MB of storage space. An ultrasound sonogram requires about 0.25 MB, and a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) image requires about 0.07 MB.
Due to the enormity of the radiological data needed to be stored, it has been a developing practice at least in one hospital, namely, the UCLA Medical School in Los Angeles, Calif., to store this data on mainframe optical discs. These are physically about 12" to 14" discs and are permanently housed in mainframe computer storage facilities as part of a digitally based picture archiving and communicating system (PACS). This system replaces conventional x-ray films operating systems. A problem with PACS, however, is the difficulty of data retrieval. PACS is structured on a "first-in-first stored" system, and hence when particular data is required about a particular patient, a long lead time is necessary to assemble all that data for display.
By recording a patient's diagnostic data on an optical disk file, it is possible to maintain an up-to-date record of each patient's entire medical history. This would be useful for diagnostic purposes. To date this has not been possible with existing storage media.
Computer systems have made progress in recent years, and a variety of systems are now available. For instance, personal computers commonly used in hospitals and physician offices are currently based essentially on either an IBM PC/AT (Trademark), Macintosh (Trademark), or SUN (Trademark) information processing systems. The term IBM PC/AT processing system includes diferent clone systems. Such operating systems however are basically incompatible and this limits the ability to process information and transfer data from one system to another.
It is desirable in carrying out a diagnosis, that stored personal medical information be usable on different computer systems within the same hospital or at other hospitals. It should also be possible to record and store data obtained in the radiologic diagnosis on the storage media operable with the different computer systems.
With conventional information processing systems, storage media and computer systems this has not yet been achieved.